There was another first at Sunday’s Vitality Women’s FA Cup Final on Sunday, where Chelsea beat Manchester United to lift the title.
On top of this year’s game being the first-ever sold out Women’s Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, with the 77,390 crowd also the largest worldwide for a domestic women’s game, we also had three British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters present.
With the aim of making everything around the Final as accessible as possible, we were joined by Ali Gordon, Radha Starr and Joanna Aldridge to support the event.
Ali was positioned pitchside throughout the day, where she was able to provide BSL translation exclusively for content appearing on the in-bowl big screens during the build-up and subsequent coverage of the game.
And Radha, who is deaf herself, was then in position next to national anthem singer Jasmine Faulkner to translate for the crowd and broadcast audience around the world.
She was supported by Joanna, who helped to prompt Radha when the anthem started, to explain the tone and any elongation of the song during the performance.
Going forward, the FA will ensure that there is to be a minimum of two BSL interpreters at every cup final event hosted at Wembley as standard as we aim to make football more accessible to all.
Marie Pascall, founder and CEO of Performance Interpreting had this to say “ We are elated at Wembley Stadium and the FA’s continued dedication to include British Sign Language access for their Deaf customers. This enables Deaf fans to feel included at these events and experience the thrill of watching live sport.”
